== Meeting information == * #ubuntu-meeting Meeting, 06 Mar at 17:02 — 17:44 UTC * Full logs at [[http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2014/ubuntu-meeting.2014-03-06-17.02.log.html]] == Meeting summary == === catch up with the Tech Board. === The discussion about "catch up with the Tech Board." started at 17:02. * ''ACTION:'' YokoZar Mail Mark re U name for the TB to use for opening up next release == Vote results == == Action items, by person == * YokoZar * YokoZar Mail Mark re U name for the TB to use for opening up next release == Done items == * (none) == People present (lines said) == * pitti (69) * czajkowski (32) * YokoZar (27) * dholbach (22) * pleia2 (12) * sabdfl (9) * slangasek (7) * mdeslaur (7) * meetingology (4) * cjwatson (1) == Full Log == 17:02 #startmeeting 17:02 Meeting started Thu Mar 6 17:02:29 2014 UTC. The chair is czajkowski. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology. 17:02 17:02 Available commands: action commands idea info link nick 17:02 kees, mdeslaur, slangasek, stgraber: around? 17:02 #topic catch up with the Tech Board. 17:02 dholbach: on the phone, but meaning to be around 17:02 sure, I'm here 17:03 slangasek: mdeslaur howdy folks 17:03 heya 17:03 hi 17:03 So how are things in the TB going ? 17:03 care to give us an update ? 17:03 * pitti waves hello 17:04 seems pretty low-key, really 17:04 not much demand for our services :-) 17:05 I joined a few mins late, was there any question to the TB already? 17:05 for those of you who haven't been around in the last meeting - the CC catches up with governance and community teams as part of our meeting to see how things are going and to have a look at "operations" from a bit of a distance :) 17:05 ah 17:05 pitti, just generally asking how things have been going :) 17:05 well, we actually skipped the last few meetings due to not having any agenda 17:05 on the meetings we did have, things are usually going well, the biggest recent hiccup was the late re-election of the TB itself 17:06 but the day-to-day business is usually MREs and the like 17:06 so the new TB members have settled in well in their low-key new activity? :) 17:06 pitti: yes we are sorry about that 17:06 it's been a while since we have had a long and difficult technical discussion 17:06 o/ 17:06 czajkowski: no worries, nobody's fault in particular 17:06 and hopefully we won't let it go that late again, the issues there was so many boards expiring at the same time, including the CC. 17:06 is it worth having a meeting even when there is a blank agenda so people can catch up 17:07 pitti: This is perhaps due to the LTS nature of Trusty making all reasonable decisions of this nature done well in advance, yes? 17:07 does the community know they can reach out to the TB ? 17:07 we used to have a lot more topics, but that was in the days when ubuntu was driven a lot more by UDSes and community 17:07 so when there's been long discussions and difficult decisions, how did you feel it generally went? 17:07 and also because there is not that much major change going on in the non-phone-y bits 17:07 YokoZar: yeah, that too 17:08 dholbach: as they should go, really; I remember discussions like "should we install binary drivers by default", the OpenSSL vs. GPL debate, etc. 17:08 pitti: so how do you feel it is driven now considering we have online uds 17:08 we had a thorough discussion, voting, annoucned it to the devel crowd, and there generally hasn't been any negative feedback about those 17:08 which is great to see 17:09 pitti, sure - I was just wondering if you were happy with that kind of discussions (so no major delays, everyone weighing in, decision making process is sufficiently refined, etc.) 17:09 dholbach: oh yes; we could have had some speedier discussions for sure, but that's just the nature of timezones and (often) email-based communication, so not much to complain from my side 17:10 nods 17:10 cool 17:10 We put the TB on a 2 year cycle as well as the CC, do you guys feel it's correct for them to be replaced mid-way through an LTS cycle or should we move the elections to, say, just after the next LTS release rather than a few months before? 17:10 I guess that's similar for the CC as well :) 17:10 czajkowski: as I said, the desktop/server bits don't have a lot of structural change these days, so nothing that bubbles up to the TB 17:10 (we had a similar argument ~ the CC itself) 17:10 what I am missing a bit is to discuss technical architecture of the phone 17:11 pitti: ah interesting 17:11 where does that currently take place? 17:11 pitti, do you have an example of what you feel would have warranted a discussion with the TB? 17:11 there's the ubuntu-phone@ ML and such 17:11 (just to get an idea) 17:11 and most of the design decisions etc. are just fine 17:12 the main thing that comes to my mind is that in retrospect we should have discussed how to build the image-based upgrades without breaking /etc/ so hard 17:12 pitti: so you're saying you agree with them, but you'd like to see the TB perhaps involved more in the discussion or be involved more ? 17:12 pitti: any thoughts from the tb regarding the init system stuff? (mark kind of announced it after debian made their decision "pending community discussion") 17:12 seems like something the tb should have weighed in on first 17:12 pleia2: ah, I deliberately didn't bring that up -- but yes, that'll most certainly be a bigger discussion that comes in the next cycle :) 17:13 * pleia2 troublemaker :) 17:13 pleia2: well, we will 17:13 * pleia2 nods 17:14 to be fair, Mark said "I will ask the Ubuntu tech board (many of whom do not work for Canonical) to review the position" :) 17:14 yeah 17:14 czajkowski: yes, but this is the main issue I have really; and it's always easy to say in hindsight "we should have discussed that more", but not that easy to plan in advance 17:14 but yeah :) 17:15 czajkowski: so I don't want to stress that too much really; but I think we need a version 2 of that, and thus maybe the TB is a good forum to discuss that new design 17:15 but yeah, in general I think it's working ok 17:15 pitti: I agree 17:15 so perhaps this is something we can raise and see if we can drive some discussion over to yo folks to get your experience in 17:15 how much of the discussion happens on the mailing list and how much in meetings? do non-TB members weigh in as well? 17:16 and ask dholbach pointed out sabdfl did say he would ask the TB 17:16 pleia2: I'm sure cjwatson and slangasek have a super-huge desire to discuss upstart vs. systemd soon :-) (it's not like they wasted many months of their lifetime thinking about it already..) 17:16 hehe 17:16 pitti: yeah, I followed the debian discussions 17:16 dholbach: historically, most in meetings due to the synchronous nature 17:17 dholbach: these days, small things like MRE requests or the LTS lifetimes are happening mostly over email as that's more practical 17:17 dholbach: and yes, we have non-TB members posting to the list 17:17 yeah, that makes perfect sense 17:17 pitti: it's on the vUDS schedule I believe 17:17 cjwatson: ah, "fun" :) 17:17 cjwatson: ah, great 17:18 hi all, sorry to be late 17:19 so it sounds like the TB processes are well-oiled machinery... is there anything which has been on your collective minds to be changed at some stage? or things which have repeatedly been put on the backburner? 17:19 * pitti scratches head, nothing comes to my mind from the last 2 years really 17:19 even better :) 17:19 I'll reraise my question from earlier, as I believe it got skipped: We put the TB on a 2 year cycle as well as the CC, do you guys feel it's correct for them to be replaced mid-way through an LTS cycle or should we move the elections to, say, just after the next LTS release rather than a few months before? 17:20 I think the OpenSSL vs. GPL debate came up several times 17:20 oh, so the CC kept having meetings that had no agenda for a while, which is when we started doing these check-ins, I wonder if something similar might be useful for TB and dev teams? 17:20 YokoZar: I have no strong opinion on this... more important is to not leave a gap, as we did last fall 17:20 YokoZar: ah, I didn't think that was aimed at TB; as the elections were supposed to happen much much earlier, it would have even been during saucy I believe 17:21 Right around saucy release 17:21 was original schedule I think 17:21 yeah 17:21 YokoZar: I actually think it's quite a good time, as traditionally during the LTS cycles there's not that much to decide 17:22 pitti: hypothetically, though, if we replace the entire board it might make a bunch of new decisions 17:22 pitti: thanks for the udpate this has been great to her and nice to see a healthy TB 17:22 pleia2: indeed and I wondered if doing somehting similar for the TB would be useful for them to get to have more discussion here 17:23 YokoZar: same could be said for any board at any given time tbh 17:23 YokoZar: yes, but that could happen at any point? 17:23 czajkowski: pitti: for sure, but would it be "less bad" after an LTS rather than before? 17:23 so yes, if we elect a board that makes silly decisions, something went wrong before that 17:23 YokoZar: yes, perhaps 17:23 did anyone see pleia2's question? I personally think it might be worth trying 17:24 YokoZar: but then a new board would actually be thrown into a time when there's potentially many discussions to make, which might be more overwhelming for new members? 17:24 pitti: mdeslaur slangasek how about whe you've a blank agenda, still having a meeting 17:24 so people can see a discussion and join 17:24 we've started doing this and it's been very useful 17:24 that's what we've done so far 17:25 Not sure how frequent it is for "lay folk" to pop into TB meetings and raise an issue, but it does happen with CC meetings from time to time 17:25 or you could arrange a catch up wth groups the tb has an interst in 17:25 we usually do 17:25 wait a bit 17:25 then say "nothing to discuss" and end it again 17:25 YokoZar: it does happen quite often; in fact that's the norm, as these days the TB rarely raises issues by themselves 17:25 i. e. someone adds an agenda item and then usually appears in the meeting 17:26 great - as others have said... I'm quite happy with how the TB is working - I'm done with questions :) 17:26 keep up the good work everyone! :) 17:26 pitti: so perhaps around a time when it's too late to reasonably change things in the LTS cycle, but before hecticness of post-release. Like around the next UDS we're having. 17:26 thanks pitti :) 17:26 What if elections were considerably before terms starting? 17:26 YokoZar: yeah, sounds good 17:27 Like we vote around now, and incoming members start their term after LTS release 17:27 YokoZar: I don't like that very much, I must say; I think it's good for the old board to have a last meeting after the election to hand over, but not much more 17:27 but I don't have a strong opinion on that 17:28 Relatedly, I am encouraged by the lack of strong opinions regarding our election rules, it means our politics aren't particularly "politics" ;) 17:28 any other questions folks before we wrap up 17:28 * sabdfl is still reading the scrollback 17:28 YokoZar: or that things are mostly going well and all that's left to do is finetuning :) 17:28 YokoZar: you just like running polls! admit it :P 17:30 This is not an "admission" any more than one confesses to liking the sunrise 17:30 hehe 17:32 regarding init 17:32 if the TB has a strong opinion different to the broad roadmap of "adopting systemd on an appropriate schedule" then i'm very open to hearing it 17:33 sabdfl: probably the wrong place here, but FWIW, I agree to you 17:34 sabdfl: seeing how much recent action there is in Debian towards adding native systemd packagse to stuff, I think in a year or so we'll have this robust enough 17:34 sabdfl: with RHEL7 moving to systemd the server world ought to catch up quickly 17:34 my commentary was not to subvert the TB, but to express that there is no ideological attachment to code that 'belongs' to Canonical 17:34 the desktop world pretty much worked two years ago already, but our concern was the server back then 17:34 we'll move where works best, and i trust the TB to map that out 17:34 so for me it's not a question of "if", but "when/how" 17:35 So, not understanding much of ubuntu-phone, how specific are the phone-related technical decisions that we can expect in the future? 17:35 as long-term it seems much better to follow Debian than eternally diverging 17:35 YokoZar: they are actually meant to become less and less phone specific over time 17:35 YokoZar: "convergence" 17:35 pitti: I don't believe that RHEL7 is doing anything that we'll significantly be able to leverage; too much of this is integration work which doesn't translate 17:36 but I'm not sure the CC meeting is the place to have this discussion :) 17:36 YokoZar: i. e. the phone is by and large a playground (excuse the wording, sabdfl) for trying out new technology like upgrades or display server 17:36 without the need for backwards compat 17:36 Yes, I imagined that was the eventual goal of any reasonable implementation. 17:36 I would hope phone would soon be "absorbed" into the rest of Ubuntu governance smoothly 17:36 YokoZar: yes, AFAIUI that's the plan 17:37 this was a particularly difficult thing to watch unfold, since in a sense we were never consulted on an issue with major consequences for us, and we're a member of the family 17:37 but then, some would argue we had great representation at the table, only wearing different hats 17:37 nothing more from me, thanks TB for checking in 17:37 the phone has laid a lot of new approaches to both technology (like Mir) and methods (like CI) 17:37 And, say, phone community == ubuntu community and phone tech decisions == ubuntu tech decisions with the same relevant governance 17:37 and they are certainly meant to be used on desktop in the future as well 17:38 in practice they are still quite separated these days, but I think that's mostly due to the LTS 17:38 e. g. we can't/shouldn't land things like Mir/Unity 8 now 17:38 and likewise can't turn our upgrade mechanics upside down now 17:39 pitti: I like those honest decisisons where we admit things aren't ready even when we wish they were 17:39 Do you think the archive itself might continue some of this delta? I vaguely worry about a future where we have, say, the arm arch for desktop packages have a lot of phone-specific deltas with a separate decision tree from the rest of the distro 17:40 any other comments folks before we wrap it up 17:40 there is no archive delta for the phone at the moment 17:40 YokoZar, that sounds like a summary for the work leading up to the next LTS - bringing unity8 to the desktop and making the convergence happen :) 17:40 it's just using a different version of unity 17:41 YokoZar: yes, it's less along the lines of architecture and more of package selection 17:41 unity8-desktop-session-{mir,x11} in trusty :) 17:41 I expect that to become the default soon 17:41 i. e. convergence to make a leap in 14.10 17:41 mdeslaur: Right, and perhaps if we do convergence especially "wrong" in the future we might have different versions of a lot of things on phone vs desktop 17:42 sabdfl: btw, any chance we can get the u name before the release? it's needed in a couple of places, and last time we had to do a number of SRUs due to that 17:42 ugh 17:42 I'll follow up with him (he left) 17:42 Though 17:42 I have hounded him with that question before 17:42 ah 17:42 I suspect hearing it from the TB as well might help 17:43 ok thanks folks 17:43 thanks a lot everyone! 17:43 thanks! 17:43 thanks everyone! 17:43 Mark WILL delay the full name as long as possible for marketing/other purposes though 17:43 Thank you folks 17:44 Do we have any other business? 17:44 #action YokoZar Mail Mark re U name for the TB to use for opening up next release 17:44 * meetingology YokoZar Mail Mark re U name for the TB to use for opening up next release 17:44 #endmeeting Generated by MeetBot 0.1.5 (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology)